Sunday, July 6, 2008

Title: The Professor and the Co-EdAuthor: Babette HallCoverartist: uncredited

Yours for: $9

Best things about this cover:

This guy must have gotten his Ph.D. in Gigantic Chalkboardery

"How do you like my perky breasts, professor?" / "I'd like them a whole lot better if you'd actually point them in this direction, you idiot."

"My hands can do the splits" / "Uh, yes, that's very nice. Get out."

Seriously, that guy looks way more annoyed than he does excited.

Sometimes I write autobiographical stuff under the name "Babette Hall" ...

Best things about this back cover:

I love blurbs that are descriptive rather than qualitative. So thank you ... Marc Connelly, whoever you are.

I don't think I can do anything to add to the hilarity of Professor Shaw's revealing, sadistic diatribe.

"Top critics have hailed this novel, and millions of readers agree..." - agree that WHAT!? Hailed it as WHAT? Way to avoid the whole "quality" issue.

That Ladies' Home Journal blurb ... I've never seen anything like it. It's not related to anything. It's a complete non sequitur designed only to take up space, as far as I can tell.

Page 123~

I'm trying to make sense of Any of the sentences on this page, and I'm failing. I can barely make grammatical sense of them. Let's try this:

On the other hand I suspected there was something false in my philosophy because Phineas Todd wanted more than any of us, and accused the other Goat-singers of being satisfied with crumbs. It was all very confusing. I hoped to find the answer in Hollywood

and this:

But Seattle in my affections wasn't any larger than the pink bauble, not as large actually, being more remote.

5 comments:

The professor looks about three years younger than the coed. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But if she's sixteen, that makes him thirteen, which is really too young to handle professorial responsibilities, in my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong.

Isn't 16 a little young for a co-ed? 17 or 18 would be normal - unless Julie is smart and skipped a grade.

The Ladies Home Journal quote could refer to Julie's age - "Julie might only be 16, but she's really older because she knows so much". But who knows - the back cover seems about as cryptic as page 123.

Of course, the more typical case with teenage girls (and sometimes even older) is that they think they know everything, but in reality are totally clueless.

2. This book was by atleast two million people. ("millions of readers") Excluding those under 14, then 1.5% of the entire rest of the population read this book! If the book sold 100,000 copies it would still be necessary for each copy to be read by 20 different readers. It is amazing that Rex's copy isn't more dog-earred!

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